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SARAH Hall was the only woman to survive to the next round of shortlisting for Britain's most prestigious literary honour, £50,000 Man Booker Prize (with all except one of the women and one of the first-time novelists on the long list failing to make the grade), with her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, which was not even originally submitted by her publishers for consideration but "called in" by the judges. But it was David Mitchell who was immediately named by bookmakers William Hill and Ladbrokes as the favourite to win on October 19 with his ambitious broad sweep of a novel, Cloud Atlas. Mitchell has faced the nail-biting result once before, as have his two major rivals on the shortlist, Alan Hollinghurst, with The Line of Beauty, and Colm Toibin for The Master. The other contenders are Gerard Woodward with his semi-autobiographical second novel, I'll Go to Bed at Noon, and Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor, a South African writer who has devoted much of his life to black politics and now works for the United Nations. Chris Smith, the former Culture Secretary who chaired the judges, admitted there had been some "surprisingly bad" books on the original long list of 132, but the shortlisted six could all hold their own with winners of previous years. He said: "If there is one essential characteristic of all these books, it is the quality of their writing, their use of words and deployment of imagery. In a strong field these novels have stood out as being truly remarkable." However, Martin Higgs, the literary editor of Waterstone's bookshops, said that only Hollinghurst, Mitchell and Toibin counted because there was such a buzz about them. "It's really a three-horse race in a way that I can't quite remember happening for a long time. I don't think I have ever looked at a list and thought half have got a chance and half haven't," he said. Among the books which failed to make their way to the next round were Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the much talked about debut of Susanna Clarke, and Cherry by Matt Thorne, which provoked controversy after it was revealed that he was a friend of two of the judges. But the six that won through on second reading each had their defenders among the jury of Tibor Fischer, the novelist, Robert Macfarlane, a writer and academic, Rowan Pelling, founder of The Erotic Review, and Fiammetta Rocco, the journalist. Fischer said Cloud Atlas was the "most ambitious novel published this year", that Hollinghurst was "extremely elegant", and Hall was "very lyrical". He said Bitter Fruit gave an insight into present-day South Africa. Robert Macfarlane said The Master by Colm Toibin was a work of "exceptional control" while Rowan Pelling praised Gerard Woodward for his amazing depiction of the effects of addiction on a family. The long list of 22 had six books by first-time novelists and a third of the titles were written by women, prompting criticisms that major names such as David Lodge and V. S. Naipaul had been excluded. — The Independent |
